₦airaland Forum

camelus: Nigerians will lose Nigeria to a civil war” – Ribadu calls for amnesty for Boko Haram

Former chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, Nuhu Ribadu has voiced his support for amnesty for members of Islamic sect, Boko Haram.

On Saturday, Ribadu warned that if President Goodluck Jonathan refused to grant amnesty to Boko Haram, the country could fall into another civil war.

He said if President Jonathan didn’t act soon, with the way things were occurring in the country, “Nigerians will lose Nigeria to a civil war.”

“Jonathan was wrong to have said he will not grant amnesty to Boko Haram; he should not fail to protect the people and when people call saying we are tired, we are down; even if it means to dialogue and have a solution to the whole process, he should opt for such.

“You cannot say they are faceless because faceless people do not do things like this. Faceless people cannot be responsible and daily you see them on Facebook. Faceless people cannot be in your custody; ghosts cannot be people that are in the community, people who at a point wanted to dialogue,” Ribadu said.

Former Lagos State Governor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, recently supported the idea  of an amnesty when he was in Kano to sympathize with the Emir of Kano, Alhaji Ado Bayero, over the attack on him and his convoy. “For the innocent ones among them, there must be amnesty. We cannot fight a war in our own country against minor crimes and minor people. We would only end up multiplying these people by trying to use force against our own citizens,” he said.

According to reports, Ribadu who spoke on Liberty FM in Kaduna on Saturday insisted that President Jonathan granted amnesty to the sect for peace to return to the country, adding that a war could be averted “if we come together forgetting about sentiments, about differences and working towards unity and saving the resources of this country because it is only through that we will be able to achieve peace.”

russellino: The things that bedeviled the biafran war effort were poor organisation, inefficiency and politics. Coupled with lack of weapons it was only a matter of time before the war would have been lost. However I believe that guerilla warfare should have been heavily used with conventional warfare kept for when there would have been an ample cache of weapons to sustain it. The nigerian army was very heavily armed and trained by superpowers and the arab world.

The terrain of the east would have been perfect for it. I also wonder why they weren't making serious effort to steal from the nigerians. Coupled with sound intelligence, a well trained unit of commandos could track and stun a convoy of weapons

Emperor_007: Biafrans should not have trusted SW, and should never again , especially in war related issues

Biafra needed to have strong foreign allies ( at least two ), even before embarking on the Aburi Accord, had some terms agreed on should ...

Insider ( saboteurs ) should have been better monitored and regulated

...

Tolexander: but you said they are intelligent? How come they couldn't suggest a strategy to conquer their enemy as many as the biafran soldiers were?

Negro_Ntns: you did not go north because you feared hausa, choosing instead to go terrorize small communities of people who were neutral. well the capital is in north now and for all the ibo massacres since how many times have you punched back?

Alfamann: Okechukwu Mmadufo (Amichi, Biafra): joined the Biafran Army on 14th March 1968. Last heard of on 14th March 1969 when he led a small battalion into Nkpor sector. Great hero of Biafra, Nadimma my brother. I wish there were many more like you.

Your name may not be widely known, but your comrades in arms remember you.

slimghost: JOE ACHUZIA, the biafran Hannibal!

Tolexander: so biafran soldiers never killed any civilian?

That is the problem with biafrans.
Quit propaganda. Another Strategy would have won the war and not propaganda.

Tolexander: introduction of Jesus into this matter has no mental affliation.
Satan and Jesus had a battle till the point of resurrection. I.e during trial, crucifixion and death. Jesus won when he resurrected. Cos the main battle Jesus was meant to fight is to DIE AND RESURRECT!

FSU: Who are the plenty Yorubas? I DID NOT KNOW THREE OUT OF 40 MILLION IS PLENTY. AWO BEING THE YOROUBA LEADER LED THEM TO JOIN THE NORTH IN KILLING FELLOW HUMANS MAINLY VIA STARVATION.

Negro_Ntns: add Victor Banjo there. Plenty Yoruba struggled so you can be freed from your oppressors. You fvkd up when instead of heading north to fight your oppressor you headed west to fight a friend, ended up with a new enemy and the demolition of biafra.

CyberG: You funny o! The guys who LOST are HEROES but the VICTORS who pummelled the losers into fleeing to Abidjan and beyond are not HEROES?? Well, history cannot be re-written nonetheless! Talking about ZEROES:

General Olusegun Obasanjo, GCFR. <Highly decorated soldier and statesman>

General Benjamin Adekunle, Commander 3MCD. <Nigeria's only Blitzkrieg commander, G. S Patton playmate in the theatre of war>

General Phillip Effiong <He did the sensible thing to stop the wanton sacrifice of iboz embarked on by ojuku>

Tolexander: who are criminal in the real sense.

Biafran soldiers that engaged in a war with nigerian soldiers are considered heroes?

Nigerian soldiers that engaged in a war with the biafran soldiers are considered a criminal and hell bound bigots.

Your assertion- biafran soldiers never shot anything during the war abi which made them not to be considered a criminal and hellbound bigots?

Tolexander: General Benjamin Maja Adekunle.

General Muritala Rahmat Muhamad

Litmus: So now how is this going? Is the Port in use?

saw this this:



EIGHT months after it was commissioned by President Goodluck Jonathan, the N4.6 billion Onitsha River Port Complex is yet to commence operations.

Located in Anambra State, the port, which has never really functioned since it was first commissioned by former President, Shehu Shagari in 1983, was rehabilitated by the present administration through the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA), as part of efforts to boost economic activities in the South Eastern part of the country.

Commissioning the port in August, last year, Jonathan said that the Federal Government decided to embark on the development of the country’s inland waterways transport as a way of exploiting all avenues of enhancing both road, rail, air and water transportation in the country.

“The river or marine transport must be enhanced and to do it, we need inland port like the one in Onitsha. Our target is to link all the ports by roads and rail so that doing business in Nigeria becomes easy. The river ports must be linked up to other areas of resource. Today, the process is being started and others on the drawing board must be completed,” said Jonathan.


http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=115969:fresh-worries-as-onitsha-port-remains-dormant&catid=81:maritime-watch&Itemid=591

Demdem: Having stayed within the NigerDelta region for over a decade now, i doubt if majority from here will want to have anything to do with Biafra (which to me is a waste of time). Its a long story. The question is, will Biafra accept to leave without annexing these areas? Die-Hard Biafrans believe its part of their land up till the Atlantic ocean

BOA®:
Utter rubbish...

‘’In almost twenty years of writing this column, I have never written any article in support of anyone because he is ‘’my brother’’; neither have I written one against anyone because he is not ‘’my brother’’, Dele Sobowale asserts in an article under the above headline in the Vanguard newspaper edition of February 24. Everyone, according to the self acclaimed ‘’Area Boy in the Media’’, from the North to the South, East and West received the same amount of treatment (vitriol?) from him. Well, we cannot ascertain the veracity or otherwise of this spurious claim, but in a space of one week, Dele, writing in his column, ‘’Frankly Speaking’’ has suddenly become an advocate for one man-Wale Babalakin of the Bi-Courtney infamy, a man from the same ethnic stock as Sobowale; producing in the process, two articles in defence of a fellow Yoruba.
It must be a very dramatic turn in fortune and perspective for Sobowale. On February 18, he began a ‘’series’’ that is certainly bound to redefine his persona; for good or bad. Writing under the caption ‘’Who wants Babalakin Dead’’, Sobowale took on the Asset Management Company of Nigeria (AMCON) for daring to execute an ex parte order of court in respect of Bi-Courtney, a company owned by Babalakin. Every adult Nigerian is aware of the inglorious role Bi-Courtney played in the failed execution of the Lagos-Ibadan Express Way construction contract which the company won. AMCON was only doing its legitimate duty, going after chronic debtor companies of which Bi-Courtney is one. But this does not seat pretty with Sobowale who is insinuating bias and ethnic cleansing against Babalakin-read Yoruba, in this instance. I am however aware of several other companies in Nigeria which AMCON is also beaming its searchlight, using the same strategy but Sobowale has never seen anything odd about the tactics of the organisation-until now, that is! To be sure, I am not the spokesperson for AMCON so I am not competent to speak on all the allegations of impropriety leveled against the establishment by Dele.
I have however been inevitably drawn into this because of the ‘’series’’ which has now ominously berthed at the door-step of the Aviation Minister, Princess Stella Adaeze Oduah, OON. Writing under the above caption, Sobowale alleged that the Aviation Minister is at the heart, indeed ‘coordinating’ the efforts aimed at the ‘’persecution’’ of Babalakin. Oduah’s ‘sins’, according to Sobowale, is her insistence that Nigeria and her people cannot be given the short end of the stick with regard to Concession and Lease Agreements in the Aviation Ministry-not under her watch! We do not intend to interrogate the way and manner Bi-Courtney even emerged as the ‘preferred bidder’ for the MM2, we leave that story for another day. But the point has to be emphasised, and very strongly too, that the Bi-Courtney ‘Concession Agreement’ remains one of the most horrific in the history of Concession and Lease agreement in Nigeria today in its audacity for an orchestrated reap-off of the Nigerian state.
To be sure, other past Aviation Ministers may, and perhaps might indeed have looked the other way with regard to the Bi-Courtney Agreement. They may have their reasons, but this Minister has a different perspective on how government ‘business’ is run. Nigeria and Nigerians, she insists, must have a fair deal in any transaction under the Aviation ministry. It is this insistence that Nigeria cannot, and ought not to be short-changed in order to satisfy an individual or corporate entity’s whims and caprices that has piqued Sobowale so much so that he has elected to prosecute a proxy ‘’war’’, dressed in ethnic garb against the Aviation Minister. All the talk about sack of staff of the Yoruba stock is not only unfounded and baseless but ultimately diversionary. I can bet that neither Sobowale nor Babalakin cares a hoot about the well being and welfare of Yoruba personnel in the Aviation Ministry and its Agencies, because if they do they will realise that the Yoruba has fared far better that other ethnic nationalities in terms of employment opportunities under Princess Stella Oduah. Anyone who cares to know should start from an audit of her personal Aides. The Yoruba are more than fairly represented.
The point has to be made that the institutional reform the Minister is implementing has no ethnic or religious face. All those who are qualified and competent have been given a fair and equal chance to prove their relevance to their organisations irrespective of where they may hail from. So the entire gamut of Sobowale’s claims of ethnic cleansing through unjustifiable sack and dismissal are just diversionary. To be sure, the allegations are only a veiled, yet obvious pretext to launch a campaign for Bi-Courtney’s claims of spurious exclusive rights to all domestic airports in the entire Lagos state! We do not intend to dwell too much on this as the matter is currently before competent courts of law for adjudication. But the point must be clear to all that Sobowale is not doing any altruistic work on behalf the Yoruba race simply because there is indeed no basis for it as allegations of victimisation are completely false. People should therefore be clear about what he is actually doing-he is only prosecuting a mercantilist war for and on behalf of Bi-Courtney Aviation Services Limited and Wale Babalakin.
This brings us to his claim that he has ‘’never met’’ Wale Babalakin. This is as pedestrian as it is immaterial. A Dele Sobowale does not need to ‘physically’ meet a Wale Babalakin in order to do the latter’s bidding. While we are not inferring that he is in fact executing a script authored by Babalakin, what is certain is that proxy and mercenary wars are often fought without a physical meeting with clients. But the coincidence in this instance is not lost on us – Babalakin has issues with AMCON, Dele Sobowale elects to be his advocate in his column, asking rhetorically ‘’who wants Babalakin dead’’. Barely a week later, Sobowale continues the Babalakin ‘series’ with a personal declaration of war against the Aviation Minister who is interrogating the business transaction of Bi-Courtney, owned as it were by Babalakin! Haba, Dele!
Now to the real question of war. To be sure, the Aviation Minister will not engage in any kind of warfare with Dele Sobowale. Pitiably, the Yoruba nation will not join him to prosecute what is clearly a self-declared war whose motives are at best, pecuniary and unclear. The Yoruba race is too enlightened to be hoodwinked into fighting a war that is neither just nor rational but dressed elegantly in ethnic robes. In the end, Dele Sobowale will be left to fight his self-declared war all alone-and against himself. The outcome is never in doubt. Dele Sobowale will be vanquished-by Dele Sobowale.

Joe Obi is the Special Assistant (Media) to the Hon. Minister of Aviation. He contributed this piece from Abuja.

truth4meal: What part of your body do you engage it service when you are compelled to think? Am sure its not your brain...because if you alluded the "well done" of infrastructural projects to an igbo commissioner of Finance and in comparing it to the Yoruba-ful cabinet of Tinubu insult the dexterity of the yorubas - you have only shown you are not privilege to have a brain. If the Igbos are as so good why is all the development indices favouring the west over the east? Or is that commissioner of Igbo extract the only Igboman that can produce result cos the rest is not producing "well done" results.

truth4meal: so Yorubas don't leave in the east? Why are they not fanatically opening stupid hating thread of their host governor? Why is it that you guys just hate Fashola's collosal achievement that eyes can see.

"Unemployment rate in Anambra is among the highest in the South-east zone, at 21.3 per cent, it is higher than the national average of 21.1 per cent. Imo’s unemployment rate is 29.9 per cent and Enugu is 15 per cent. The state has tried to reduce unemployment through its Anambra Integrated Development Strategy (ANIDS) and the Anambra Youth Reorientation and Empowerment Program (ANSYREP), but the problem with these programmes is that they contribute very little to the production base of the state."

"The education sub sector is allocated N10.99 billion. The state has a longstanding reputation of being an educationally advanced state: it has at least nine institutions of higher learning, its literacy rate is comparatively high, in a 2010 NBS literacy survey, youth literacy in the state was said to be 92.9 per cent and adult literacy at 74.0%. However, compared to its South-east neighbours, the state has the third lowest adult literacy amongst the five states, Abia has 78.2 per cent, Imo 80.8 per cent, Enugu with 64.6 per cent and Ebonyi with 69.8 per cent. This means that in education terms, Anambra is performing poorer than most other states in its region. From this regional perspective, it means investment in education urgently needs attention and ought to be ramped up."